Author: John Curtas

Grandma Schroader’s Sour Beans Kick Off Thanksgiving Week

Yes, it’s Thanksgiving Week food fans (our favorite food week of the year), and to kick it off, we at ELV thought we’d give you the recipe we’ve been touting on KNPR since 1999. We’re posting it early this year to give you plenty of time to study it, shop for it, practice it (for the full ten minutes it takes to make the entire dish), and add it to your regular Thanksgiving repertoire.

GRANDMA SCHROADER’S SOUR BEANS:

The Actual, Authentic Straight-From-The-Fifties Recipe

2 cans green beans
1/4 lb. Bacon

Fry and crumble bacon

Bring to a boil:
1/4 cup vinegar
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. Salt
chopped onion

pour over green beans
garnish with bacon

ELV’s MODERN VERSION:

Fry and crumble a pound of bacon – which is more than you’ll need, but half of it will have miraculously disappeared before you use it as a garnish.

Cook and drain one 10oz. package of French Cut Green Beans and put them in a nice serving bowl. (this takes about five minutes)

While the beans are steaming or microwaving, bring to a boil 1/2 cup vinegar (any kind will do), 1/2 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt and one chopped onion (chopped anyway you like your chopped onions to look).

No here’s the hard part so pay attention: after the sugar/vinegar/onion mixture has come to a full boil, pour the entire mixture over the beans and garnish with as much crumbled bacon as your cardiologist allows.

Serve hot, cold or any temperature in between. These beans co-exist wonderfully with any Thanksgiving dinner, and taste even better the next day. I promise – if you serve them once, you’ll serve them every year.

MICHAEL POLLAN’S ULTRA-MODERN, LOCAVORE VERSION

Grow your own beans, cure your own bacon, harvest your own onions, ferment your own vinegar and process your own sugar cane. Cook. Combine.

Boy, The Food Gal® Sure Can Snore…

She weighs barely 8 stones, has the smoothest, whitest, prettiest skin we’ve ever seen, a sweet as cherry pie disposition, hardly drinks, never overeats, and possesses the cutest little button nose you’ll ever fall in love with….but boy, she snores more than a drunken sailor in a Cartegena whorehouse.

For this reason, we’re going on our two mile run* extra early this Sunday morning.

“Run,” of course, is just a figure of speech. It’s more like a slow trot. But it’s the reason ELV, though hardly svelte, doesn’t resemble Mr. Creosote. Our goal is to drop 10 lbs. in the next couple of months…but The Food Gal®, deep in her slumber, probably has fantasies more along these lines.

Book Launch Party!

ELV note: Rather than provide the extended, extracted, exhaustive, incisive and illuminative pictorial commentary for which he is known, the folks around the ELV offices thought you’d prefer to take a quick gander at the faces, the food, the fun and the back of Al Mancini’s head that were all on display a few nights ago at our book launch party.

Merci beaucoup to Joel Robuchon, his staff, L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon,  Robin Leach, and the good folks at the MGM Grand for making the party and the launch such an incredible success!

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